There was a time when Reddit did not have subreddits (or even the ability to comment). During this time, Reddit's community was very much like HN is currently. It was mostly techy people who found Digg was getting a little too "low brow". It may not have been explicitly tech focused, but it may as well have been.
HN was delibrately set up to be "what reddit was at the start"
To me HN is more like 1999-2004 era slashdot. Certainly not like reddit.